Property people tend not to be slouches when it comes to celebrating their own achievements and the launch of Gladedale's No.1 Quartermile Square was no different.

Guest of honour Alex Salmond, who only had time to say a few words at the start of the evening, told the audience if he'd known Michelin-starred chef Martin Wishart was doing the catering he might have tried to get out of his other obligations that evening. Gladedale's Capital's managing director Jim McIntyre noted he and Salmond had something in common - they were both economists by trade. This gave heft to his estimation that commercial property was worth about £7billion to the Scottish economy.

Unfortunately Salmond admitted he too had a figure in his speech notes estimating what commercial property was worth to the Scottish economy, but as it was different than McIntyre's he wouldn't mention it.

Salmond joked: "If you laid all the economists in the world end to end you still wouldn't reach a conclusion."